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Old Computers Exhibit
prostoalex writes "Arthur Lavine was working for Chase Manhattan bank as a principal photographer. Computer Museum runs an exhibit of Arthur Lavine's photographs of old computer and data processing equipment. Fifteen black-and-white photos from the era where computers were still heading for 1.5 ton benchmark."
Its quite interresting (and funny), actually.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
At the age of 6, my dad dad took me to his workplace which looked exactly like on these pictures (IBM 370, I guess). One of the coolest things was reel-to-reel tape drive that actually PLAYED HYMN of our country (Russia)! The sound was very low and was seemingly made by moving the tape fast in very small steps.
:), shouldn't it be a must for any geek house? ;)
By the way, the purpose of my visit was to play a game called "Klings" - some kind of strategy about alien invasion. It was text-based with some ASCII (or EBCDIC ?) art, had a decent plot and very smart AI.
And the raised floor, under which you could run the cables (or breed mice, which they did at dad's work
You can also check out the Obsolete Computer Museum
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
When I started work in the UK, the company I worked for had a requirement that I had to be an 'apprentice', and in my case that was as a computer operator. It lasted about 3 weeks - at 17, I had already taught myself Algol, Fortran and Cobol, so being an operator was a bit below me. Having said that, I won't forget the experience - I could probably still load tapes as good as anyone 8-). Needless to say I soon 'graduated' to programming. Ah - those were the days - NOT.
Still, it gave you some respect to see the computer was run via a motor generator to keep the power supply constant. Disks - what are they?
Of course, the average calculator has far more power than the machine I was programming/operating - 1 instruction took about 5 microseconds, IIRC. Still, a company of 2,000 people relied on it (gasp!).
You'd be amazed, but we still use a few of the round reel tape drives similar to those in these pictures. We tried to get rid of them but our users had a minor stroke. They said that certain government agencies only accept round tape and we are legally obligated to keep them. I'm not sure I believe them, but we still have the tape drives anyway.
Of course, IBM stopped manufacturing them over 15 years ago. Thank goodness the hardware so reliable. I guess that is why it costs so much, because they never fail.
I used to be a "tape ape". It was not a very fun job. You spent your days swapping tapes, loading card decks, watching printers, distributing reports and running jobs. You spent the vast majority of your time on your feet. We even jacked up the console so you didn't have to bend over to reach it.
The only good thing was that you could drink on the job on night shifts. The only people who came to see you were the owners who who usually drunk themselves. You hid the beer under the floor where it was cool. The worst part of the job was the continuous exposure to air conditioning. It really wreaked havoc on the sinuses.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
available at IBM Archive
It's almost certainly a trading desk.
See pic 3 and -14 a big open room with phones on every desk, people waving hands in the background, and that dude in 3 has the look of a deranged risk manager.
Note that there are no terminals on the desks, those are probably phone systems for easy access to floor traders and brokers.
see pic 11- stock symbols for Texaco, Royal Dutch, and Marathon Oil, and EPS=Earnings Per Share. Y69- year 1969. I'm too lazy to go back and confirm quarterly earnings for 1969.
-jpeg
Everything else does appear circa 1969-1970. There's a Frieden calculator from 1970 on top of one of the cabinets in one of the pictures of the disk farm, I think.
What is the programming language shown with the "DATA" statement? Based on the line numbers and qualified names, I'm guessing RUSH (remote use of shared hardware), which was IBM's timesharing cross between Basic and PL/1 that was briefly popular in that era.
If you accept this as "still working" and "in real use", then I think you'll be hard pushed to beat the Baby!
Another good place to browse around (if you're into this sort of thing) is the IBM Archive. In addition to what's available there online, the staff at the archive is extremely helpful- I sent them a quick email requesting a sampling of IBM advertising material from the '50s and '60s for a research paper, and they sent me (overnight!) a HUGE collection (photocopies of course).